Take a new look at Monday Weigh-ins

Hello there! If you are new here, you might want to subscribe to the RSS feed or subscribe by entering your email address in the sidebar for updates.

As someone who tries to run one weight loss challenge per year at lowcarbfriends.com, aside from chasing down people who ran away or occasionally fell into a gravy dish, one of the mandates I have always made when running a challenge is this:

Always weigh in on a Monday.

I hear the collective groans every time this is mentioned, but I’ve found that, in general, Monday weigh-ins are beneficial.

Sure, most people prefer Friday weigh-ins. This is because people tend to eat more during the weekend or let their diets or ways of eating slip through their fingers like Imelda Marcos let money slip through her fingers in a shoe store.

Friday weigh-ins can send the wrong message, however. To many, it gives the mental go-ahead that the ‘famine’ people spent all week struggling through (of their own volitions) has now ended, and it is time to feast! Eat! Binge! Swing from the licorice rope chandeliers! The problem? Many times, people spend the entirety of the following week fighting just to get back to their previous Friday weight and are usually dismayed with the initial salt-water retention weight gains (forget the migraines, runny noses, crawling leg sensations which tend to accompany binges due to intolerances to the very foods they’re craving).

The entire proposal behind a Monday morning weigh-in is to get into heads everywhere that this is a lifestyle change, and not just another diet or way of eating. The brain has been programmed all these years to view weekends as the Festivus of Eating Craptacularly, and, as a result, we find the pounds really go nowhere. Down three pounds, up four. Down two pounds, up three.

To make better choices on weekends, and to learn to cope with the crazy cacophany of events means that we’re not sabotaging our efforts every 5-6 days.

Maybe this means you can’t plan those pizza pig outs on Fridays any longer to celebrate the end of a work week. That’s what I want to hear. There are always rewards for celebration which have nothing to do with food as a reward. The hard work and the accomplishment of a difficult task is the reward. Food is merely fuel and should never be the end. After all, look what it did to our ends.

Everyone wants to be healthy and fit, and as a result of the indulgences with Ben and Jerry’s on weekends, many a diet begins on Mondays and end them promptly at 5pm Friday afternoon. Why not try something new? Something proven which has worked for the hundreds of friends I’ve worked with in weight loss challenges? Something’s gotta give, and it shouldn’t be your waistband, and your slimming, healthy body will thank you for saving it from the ‘carb hangover’.

If you are looking for long-term weight loss success, try looking to everyone else’s least favorite day of the week and make it your favorite day for long-term health and happiness.